Support NeoGAF

[ViewtifulJC]

I think Sakurai might not be all there in the head when I read stuff like this

like "maybe this guy shouldn't be the head of designing huge video games" kinda of thing, cuz man does he say some dumbass shit

 

[MagiusNecros]

I think Sakurai might not be all there in the head when I read stuff like this

like "maybe this guy shouldn't be the head of designing huge video games" kinda of thing, cuz man does he say some dumbass shit

As he gets older he seemingly looks to get younger which might imply his brain starts to undevelop itself. Therefore saying more dumbass shit the older he gets.

I dunno.

 

[Glass Rebel]

I think if you have to resort to name-calling, there are more personal problems at play than with the game itself.

And before people jump on me, Yes I have got my fair share of time with message boards.

 

[FLAguy954]

Yeah I'll quote myself from the Smash thread (if that's alright)

I get Sakurai's desire to make an accessible game and I agree with it as an aim. I don't understand his reasoning regarding pace, though. What makes other fighters difficult is the complexity of controls and needing to be quicker with your reactions by frame than your opponent.

In Smash, even in melee, anyone can pick up the game, jump around and do some special moves. When you've got those basic controls down, you know the basics of every single character. Items and luck can then easily keep a casual player in the game, unless you're doing the classic No Items, Final Destination shit (that I personally hate).

Once the game is that accessible, I'm not sure what slowing it down so much does. The only time that a casual will really be disadvantaged by a much faster paced game is 1v1 against a pro player, and that's a hugely unlikely scenario for me and the vast majority of casuals who play the game.

I'm a casual, and Smash is for casuals, and it should always be as accessible as possible as a priority, but I simply think a slower paced smash is less fun for everyone.

He basically needs to give the option for Street Fighter-like turbo options because I did not think that Melee was to fast. Anything slower than Melee just feels weird (Brawl for example).

 

[ReiGun]

I think Sakurai might not be all there in the head when I read stuff like this

like "maybe this guy shouldn't be the head of designing huge video games" kinda of thing, cuz man does he say some dumbass shit

I wonder how other designers at Nintendo look at his comments. Nintendo in general has been about being more welcoming to casual players over the years, but Sakurai seems to be the only one willing to completely undermine the advanced players in the name that.

Look at Nintendo's other big competitive franchises, Mario Kart and Pokemon, and the designers have those games have a much better handle on this. Granted, a kart racer and an RPG aren't 1:1 with a fighting game in terms skill balance, but neither of those games' developers had any problem listening to and addressing the concerns of competitive players.

 

[Subtervotion]

I think in cases like these, what the dev wants matters less than what the fans want. I'm reminded of Gears of War. Epic tried so hard to make that game what they wanted. The (majority of) fans wanted the gnasher. In cases where devs go head to head with the fan base two common occurrences come to mind. Either the game dies out because devs refuse to appease the fans, or the game is altered and the fans stick around.

Brawl was abandoned. The fans were so fervent though that they took altering the game into their own hands.

I'm stoked as hell for ssb4. But I dont see myself putting hundreds of hours into it. Im worried the online won't live up to what it should be. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[BGBW]

I think in cases like these, what the dev wants matters less than what the fans want.

Good luck getting a consensus of what fans want with Smash.

 

[munchie64]

And yes Brawl sucks. You can like it all you want but it's top to bottom garbage. It's a crap fighting game, a crap platformer, & a crap mini-game/party game all rolled into one bad package.

Spoiler

All in jest of course. I just disagree with a lot of what you and others saying especially that Sakurai is a bad developer.

 

[KuroPyonyo]

Unpopular opinion: Sakurai isn't even a great developer.
The last great game he made was in freaking 2001 (melee).
What follows where a remake and a puzzle game which are whatever and Kirbys air ride which is mediocre.
Brawl about which is said enough already and lastly Kid Icarus with its garbage controlls that hurt my hands.
(Seriously, did no one playtest this shit for more than 30 minutes?)

What Sakurai excels at is adding lots of fluff, attention to detail and replayability, but who cares when the core is rotten?

Remember this is just my opinion, if you like his games thats okay, but please let someone else take on smash.

 

[Riposte]

http://i.imgur.com/EoVCZXr.png[IMG]
[SPOILER]All in jest of course. I just disagree with a lot of what you and others saying especially that Sakurai is a bad developer.[/SPOILER][/QUOTE]

You know, I wonder if there is even one game journo review that mentions the differences in speed/movement between Melee and Brawl or sort of touches on what people's problem with the game was. I was going to say mention tripping, but I imagine because Sakurai told people it exists and reviews are kind of like a list of features being read to you in a way that sounds like an opinion.

[quote="KuroPyonyo, post: 127826378"]Unpopular opinion: Sakurai isn't even a great developer.
The last great game he made was in freaking 2001 (melee).
What follows where a remake and a puzzle game which are whatever and Kirbys air ride which is mediocre.
Brawl about which is said enough already and lastly Kid Icarus with its garbage controlls that hurt my hands.
(Seriously, did no one playtest this shit for more than 30 minutes?)

What Sakurai excels at is adding lots of fluff, attention to detail and replayability, but who cares when the core is rotten?

Remember this is just my opinion, if you like his games thats okay, but please let someone else take on smash.[/QUOTE]

It may be your opinion (which I think is unnecessary to bring to attention), but making the implication Kid Icarus is unplayable sort of flies in the face of people being able to, well, play it.

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

I think Sakurai might not be all there in the head when I read stuff like this

like "maybe this guy shouldn't be the head of designing huge video games" kinda of thing, cuz man does he say some dumbass shit

Saying he shouldn't design games is way more dumbass shit man. By a huge measure.

"He hates tourney players, so Kid Icarus Uprising doesn't exist now"

I don't want to live in your awful world. Bitch about landing lag all you like, I'll enjoy the games instead.

 

[Nights87]

It amazes me how out of touch Sakurai is with the competitive fanbase of his game. I dont even think he fully understands why Melee was as good as it was.
Here's the thing. Sakurai identifies melee as being too complex/too fast, but I never once heard that complaint during the gamecube days. It was loved by the casuals and the hardcore. And that made sense, because casuals just enjoyed playing as their favourite nintendo characters in a fighting game universe, and the competitive players enjoyed going all out and relishing the depth and complexity of the game.

Sakurai pretty much went in an addressed a non-existent problem no-one had with the game (its too complex!!!) , and in turn, created a game that lost the magic the first 2 had. He watered down the game...for what exactly?
Its pretty obvious with everything he says he still doesn't understand what made the first 2 games so fun. All he does is point at some illusionary problem hes made up that never existed in the first place. We need someone new at the helm imo.

 

[BGBW]

Why do people always focus on minor issues like Smash's competitiveness?

There are far more important issues that need to be addressed like DK's Final Smash not ending with "DONKEY KONGA HUH!"

 

[Deckard Cain]

Spoiler

All in jest of course. I just disagree with a lot of what you and others saying especially that Sakurai is a bad developer.

This means NOTHING. At the time of Brawls release the gaming journalists were still completely ignorant to the games mechanics & system in general. Heck I remember so gaming websites giving it a perfect 10/10 which of course is a fucking joke.

Heck even NOW gaming journalist are like "It's inbetween Brawl & Melee" which it totally fucking isn't. It's actually worse than Brawl in a lot of ways because of how shitty the dashes are & the god awful recovery on everything. The game is going to be a boring turtle fest upon release.

 

[PezDispenser]

Metacritic score? You realize that literally means less than nothing, right? Here is an excellent article that explains why- http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/07/16/tripping-on-air-why-game-journalists-cant-describe-games/

 

[munchie64]

You know, I wonder if there is even one game journo review that mentions the differences in speed/movement between Melee and Brawl or sort of touches on what people's problem with the game was. I was going to say mention tripping, but I imagine because Sakurai told people it exists and reviews are kind of like a list of features being read to you in a way that sounds like an opinion.

I doubt it, at least not on metacritic. I do genuinely think that stuff like that is important for reviewing games like this, even if they're intended to be "party games" or whatever.

Remember this is just my opinion, if you like his games thats okay, but please let someone else take on smash.

I think Sakurai is best for Smash so your opinion forcing development changes is stupid lol

 

[Deckard Cain]

It's obvious what Sakurai is afraid of. He's afraid of little kids going online to have fun with Smash but instead getting their asses handed to them & then not wanting to play online anymore.

Reality is THAT IS ONLINE GAMING. Making your game shittier is not going to make any difference except now when the kid gets his ass beat it looks boring as fuck cause you removed all the fun interesting stuff from the game.

What they should have done to avoid that problem was come up with a good match making system but fat chance Nintendo could pull that off.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Userscore on metacritic is one of the first things to get bombed dead when an angry public trolls a game.

Long tail sales are also a way to see what a lot of people actually thought of a game. Brawl sold a lot, and more importantly kept selling for years. Long after the hardcore Smash fan segment wrote the game off. This suggests that in reality, it is not a crap game for people who aren't tournament Melee players.

 

[Neoriceisgood]

I disagree with this game developer so I will question his ability to reason & general sanity.


... really?


This thread makes me wish tripping came back in ssb4.

 

[The Lamp]

WTF Sakurai. All of my friends who played Melee were casual gamers and they loved it. No problems whatsoever with the pace and controls. I'm barely more than a casual player myself, but I do have a lot of experience with fighting and actions games, so I can say with some confidence that Sakurai is misguided here. Melee's advanced techniques are not a barrier to entry for novice players because novices are unaware of their existence. The supposedly difficult execution of these techniques that, again, novices will never encounter, are no more demanding than what you deal with in lower level competitive play in traditional fighting games. (Breaking throws on reaction in Tekken is harder than almost anything in Melee, for example.)

The reason Melee feels so good to play is that it's fast and the controls are perfectly responsive. Sakurai's efforts to make the Smash series casual friendly have done two things: gutted the competitive scene with no benefit to casual players, and replaced slick satisfying controls that benefited everyone with clunky laggy nonsense that brings down the entire experience. (What is tripping about anyway, if not slapping down players who know what they're doing so that they can be roflstomped by complete novices?)

Sakurai should consider letting other people take the helm, since he's unable or unwilling to recognize how Melee transcended his modest ambitions to make an accessible party brawler. He stumbled on a brilliant formula for a unique fighting game that really did appeal to players of all skill levels, and what did he do? Dedicate himself to dumbing it down. Pure incompetence.

Beautiful post. Really.

The sheer magnitude of craziness displayed in implementing a concept like tripping into this series still, to this day, blows my mind. It serves zero benefit.

Userscore on metacritic is one of the first things to get bombed dead when an angry public trolls a game.

Long tail sales are also a way to see what a lot of people actually thought of a game. Brawl sold a lot, and more importantly kept selling for years. Long after the hardcore Smash fan segment wrote the game off. This suggests that in reality, it is not a crap game for people who aren't tournament Melee players.

The series is popular and only one game happens per generation. Of course a new iteration will sell and be played.

I have hundreds of hours in Brawl, but playing Project M because it's superior.

 

[Hugstable]

As long as it doesn't have the tripping stuff, I know I'll be happy and enjoying the crap out of this game. I trust Sakurai, he's made so many great games that I enjoy especially the recent Kid Icarus Uprising. I mean if Brawl didn't have the tripping the game would've be fine overall, so even if they don't go for the speed of melee I'm still gonna be super happy. I JUST WANT TO SMASH!

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

It's obvious what Sakurai is afraid of. He's afraid of little kids going online to have fun with Smash but instead getting their asses handed to them & then not wanting to play online anymore.

Reality is THAT IS ONLINE GAMING. Making your game shittier is not going to make any difference except now when the kid gets his ass beat it looks boring as fuck cause you removed all the fun interesting stuff from the game.

What they should have done to avoid that problem was come up with a good match making system but fay chance Nintendo could pull that off.

I think you really need to take a break and sit down for a bit. This was legitimately embarrassing to read.

 

[munchie64]

Metacritic score? You realize that literally means less than nothing, right? Here is an excellent article that explains why- http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/07/16/tripping-on-air-why-game-journalists-cant-describe-games/

That article has nothing to do with anything. Holmes was either ignorant or acting like a prick. What has that got to do with whether or not reviewers like a game?

 

[CHusson91]

I'm so happy to be completely ignorant about things such as "wave-dashing" or "speed of the game". I've enjoyed every Smash Bros game so far and cannot wait until Smash 4 releases next week. Some of you guys are way too negative. Just enjoy the games!

 

[StreetsAhead]

The sheer magnitude of craziness displayed in implementing a concept like tripping into this series still, to this day, blows my mind. It serves zero benefit.

Aren't people always wanting more realism in their games?

Spoiler

I'm joking, relax. Tripping sucks.

I think he has a point in that focusing only on what is best for the competitive scene and what they want is not necessarily going to make it a fun game for everyone, though.

 

[KuroPyonyo]

I think Sakurai is best for Smash so your opinion forcing development changes is stupid lol

Project M shows whats possible when someone else takes the helm and these people are just amateurs without proper development tools.

It may be your opinion (which I think is unnecessary to bring to attention), but making the implication Kid Icarus is unplayable sort of flies in the face of people being able to, well, play it.

Certainly there are people who have no problem with that, but weren't there also a lot of people that complaint about it? (also I should add I'm left handed)
He even responded to the complaints. (In a completly unhelpful and arrogant kind of way)

 

[Yado]

Did the competitive players who got a chance to play the upcoming smash game dislike it?

 

[johnbone]

Did the competitive players who got a chance to play the upcoming smash game dislike it?

Some did, most are simply still waiting for the final product before making any judgments.

 

[Deckard Cain]

I think you really need to take a break and sit down for a bit. This was legitimately embarrassing to read.

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

 

[Tomohawk]

Project M shows whats possible when someone else takes the helm and these people are just amateurs without proper development tools.


Certainly there are people who have no problem with that, but weren't there also a lot of people that complaint about it? (also I should add I'm left handed)
He even responded to the complaints. (In a completly unhelpful and arrogant kind of way)

I think that's more a case of the platform it is then actual problems with the game.

 

[fabricated backlash]

They should cancel the game, since obviously no one seems to want it anyway.

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

lol.

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

They should cancel the game, since obviously no one seems to want it anyway.



lol.

Read: 17 bizarrely angry people on an internet forum

 

[StreetsAhead]

Did the competitive players who got a chance to play the upcoming smash game dislike it?

To be fair, current competitive players liking the game and the game being competitively viable and developing a strong scene are not mutually exclusive.

 

[johnbone]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

No I agree, you really should relax (with the name-calling) before you get yourself banned.

 

[Deckard Cain]

Some did, most are simply still waiting for the final product before making any judgments.

No actually they all said it was trash, some just said it nicer than others because they didn't want to be rude to Nintendo for letting them play the game early & be in their little events. Anyone who's played the game like me, who isn't not trying to piss off Nintendo will tell you flat out, it sucks. It's not even fun to play at the state it's in now.

 

[watershed]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

When your entire argument hinges on words like embarrassing, insulting, and idiot, you have no argument.

I wish I had that "it's time to stop posting cat.gif"

 

[fabricated backlash]

Read: 17 bizarrely angry people on an internet forum

More like full on meltdown mode.

 

[Mysterious]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

You need to take a deep breath man.

 

[Diprosalic]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

the only embarrassment in this thread is you, good thing you won't be posting much longer if you keep going at this rate, so we won't have to hear your opinions in the Smash 4 OT while we all have crazy fun playing the game.

 

[Deckard Cain]

No I agree, you really should relax (with the name-calling) before you get yourself banned.

He don't know me very well, do he?

 

[KuroPyonyo]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

Calm down man, your overly aggresive wording just takes away from the legitimate criticism.

 

[Dr.Hadji]

Is everyone missing the fact that Sakurai in this very article said they managed to keep up the "dynamics" of the game even though it might be slower than Melee. So how is the game being "dumbed down"? Are people missing that fact that Sakurai found a medium between the two speeds of fast Melee and Slow Brawl? So how is he not listening? Why does anyone think their personal history is "the" history of Smash. "I've never heard ________" well then you weren't listening enough.

My goodness. You Sakurai haters are worse than the Sakamoto haters.

 

[BGBW]

Project M shows whats possible when someone else takes the helm and these people are just amateurs without proper development tools.

Project M wouldn't exist without Brawl. Not knocking what they have achieved, but making a game from scratch is a far more different proposal than modding one. Also they are addressing years worth of analysis from, in essence, thousands of testers. A real development team doesn't have that luxury.

It also would mean the series starts to remove aspect the other half (well I say half, more like 99%) are attracted to. In order to hack in their "fixes" they have to replace certain parts of the game, parts they don't deem important, but for others these would be important.

Also any team that removes Wario's bike is wrong by default.

 

[chaosblade]

WTF Sakurai. All of my friends who played Melee were casual gamers and they loved it. No problems whatsoever with the pace and controls. I'm barely more than a casual player myself, but I do have a lot of experience with fighting and actions games, so I can say with some confidence that Sakurai is misguided here. Melee's advanced techniques are not a barrier to entry for novice players because novices are unaware of their existence. The supposedly difficult execution of these techniques that, again, novices will never encounter, are no more demanding than what you deal with in lower level competitive play in traditional fighting games. (Breaking throws on reaction in Tekken is harder than almost anything in Melee, for example.)

The reason Melee feels so good to play is that it's fast and the controls are perfectly responsive. Sakurai's efforts to make the Smash series casual friendly have done two things: gutted the competitive scene with no benefit to casual players, and replaced slick satisfying controls that benefited everyone with clunky laggy nonsense that brings down the entire experience. (What is tripping about anyway, if not slapping down players who know what they're doing so that they can be roflstomped by complete novices?)

Sakurai should consider letting other people take the helm, since he's unable or unwilling to recognize how Melee transcended his modest ambitions to make an accessible party brawler. He stumbled on a brilliant formula for a unique fighting game that really did appeal to players of all skill levels, and what did he do? Dedicate himself to dumbing it down. Pure incompetence.

This entire post sums up my opinion perfectly. You've got the perfect formula, why do you dedicate yourself to deviating from it?

I'll never understand the "other side" of the argument. I never met any of these people who couldn't enjoy Melee because it was "too complex" or "too fast" yet loved Brawl and/or 64.

 

[Hugstable]

This just in!!! Apperently only Hardcode Final Destination only players buy Smash Bros.

Spoiler

jk lol. I can't believe so many are taking this so seriously and so personally. Most people that I've played the game with competitvely actually like enjoying the game normally as well.

This entire post sums up my opinion perfectly. You've got the perfect formula, why do you dedicate yourself to deviating from it?

I'll never understand the "other side" of the argument. I never met any of these people who couldn't enjoy Melee because it was "too complex" or "too fast" yet loved Brawl and/or 64.

There is always Project M...

I'll enjoy having a new game speed to learn and adapt too. I don't like every game playing the exact same. Even games like Street Fighter makes changes to their speed and mechanics..

 

[Bisnic]

Deckard, you seem to have a huge hatred toward Sakurai. It's like he killed your dog or something.

 

[Jawmuncher]

All I know is if Sakurai wants this to appeal to me on the highest level.
Snake needs to come back as DLC.

But with that said Smash4 is look great to me.
Some of the comments in here are a bit much though.

 

[BakedYams]

Sakurai.... Pls take out lag cancel, wave dashes, take whatever you want out but pls don't slow the game down! PLEASE!!!

 

[munchie64]

You're right & people look up to that idiot Sakurai. He's an embarassment. Nintendo hired NAMCO creaters of Tekken & Soul Calbur to make Smash 4 & Sakurai squandered it. He's an embarassment & quite frankly his stance on things is insulting, to the people who play Smash, to the staff who worked hard on the game, & to Nintendo for screwing up one of their key franchises.

I'm sure Nintendo will be able to live with it.

 

[Hiko]

I am anything but a pro smash player, but Melee was some of the most fun I've ever had in a game. So much that I bought a GC just to play it. But Brawl was a snooze fest...